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Dafnis Prieto Sextet: Transparency
by John Chacona
In Cuban music, emotional grandeur and extravagant virtuosity is built on a foundation of inexhaustible rhythm. So, it's no surprise to find an abundance of juicy melodies and breathtaking drumming on Transparency from drummer and MacArthur “Genius" Fellow Dafnis Prieto. Yet for all the astonishing things he does behind the kit, what stands out on Transparency is the dazzling formal sophistication of Prieto's compositions. Eight of the nine composer credits are his and the outlier, an arrangement of ...
read moreKairos Sextet: Transition
by Troy Dostert
Given all the well-deserved attention that drummer Dafnis Prieto has been getting lately, it's understandable that one of his projects, the Kairos Sextet, is eager to acknowledge its debt to that supremely polyrhythmic composer and bandleader. But, make no mistake, this is a band really coming into its own, with plenty to say and a collective spirit that defines its independent identity quite convincingly. The eight exciting tracks on its debut album, Transition, herald an auspicious beginning to what will ...
read moreDafnis Prieto Big Band: Back to the Sunset
by Troy Dostert
The astonishingly talented and prolific drummer Dafnis Prieto has done a lot since moving to the States from his native Cuba in 1999. He's made a host of sideman appearances with musicians of widely varying stripes, including Peter Apfelbaum, Michel Camilo, Steve Coleman, Marilyn Lerner, Brian Lynch, Henry Threadgill, Chucho Valdés, and John Zorn. He won a MacArthur “genius" grant in 2011. He published an influential instructional guide, A World of Rhythmic Possibilities, in 2016. And he's recorded a significant ...
read moreDafnis Prieto Big Band: Back to the Sunset
by Jack Bowers
The alliance of Latin music and American jazz ripened on these shores more than seventy years ago, nourished by pioneers such as Mario Bauza, Chano Pozo, Dizzy Gillespie, Machito, Tito Puente and others. It has been carried forward and enhanced since then by a succession of remarkable innovators including in recent years the Cuban-born drummer Dafnis Prieto who has chosen on his seventh recording as leader to honor a number of his forebears and musical heroes in a big-band format. ...
read moreDafnis Prieto: Back to the Sunset
by Patrick Burnette
Back to the Sunset, the new album by the Dafnis Prieto Big Band opens with “Una Vez Mas," a fairly traditional Latin big band workout. Don't let that fool you--this is not your padre's Latin jazz album. Half way through the decidedly more mysterioso second track, “The Sooner the Better," it's amply apparent that Prieto is willing to explore by-ways ignored by genre traditionalists. The result is a challenging album that requires attentive listening if its pleasures are to be ...
read moreKairos Sextet: Transition
by Mike Jurkovic
Since coming to New York in '99, visionary Cuban drummer/percussionist/educator Dafnis Prieto has been the heartbeat in bands led by Henry Threadgill, Eddie Palmieri, Michel Camilo, Chucho Valdez, Bebo Valdez, Roy Hargrove, and Andrew Hill. He's found the time to be nominated for an '07 Grammy for Best Latin Album, Absolute Quintet (Soho, 2006); win a MacArthur Fellowship, be a jazz studies faculty member at NYU, and, in 2015 Prieto became a faculty member of Frost School of Music at ...
read moreDafnis Prieto Sextet: Triangles and Circles
by Dave Wayne
The thing that sets Latin jazz apart from other forms of jazz is that it's fundamentally a music for dance. The artists who create this music are expected to move gracefully back and forth between the worlds of jazz and salsa, sometimes in a single tune. Though it's overtly intended to get our bodies moving, Latin music richly deserves our respect. No one's crying “sellout" when the dance floor fills. Always rhythmically sophisticated, full of unexpected syncopations and crowd-pleasing acrobatics, ...
read moreCharles Flores: Impressions Of Graffiti
by Glenn Astarita
Reared and educated in Cuba, bassist Charles Flores migrated to the US and evolved into a first-call session artist for saxophonist David Sanchez and flautist Dave Valentine among many others. Sadly, Flores' debut solo endeavor is a posthumous release as he succumbed to cancer on August 22, 2012. Yet it's a luminous testament to his holistic musicality. With impressive chops and knowing when to employ restraint, Flores is the traffic director on these invigorating and often Latin-tinged, multihued jazz-fusion pieces. ...
read moreCharles Flores: Impressions Of Graffiti
by Dan Bilawsky
No album should ever serve as a debut and a posthumously-released pièce de résistance, but such is the case with bassist Charles Flores' Impressions Of Graffiti. At the age of 40, the Grammy Award-winning bassist, who spent time working with pianist Michel Camilo, trumpeter Brian Lynch, reed master Paquito D'Rivera, drummer Dafnis Prieto, and numerous other Latin jazz notables, finally found time to put himself first, but his time quickly ran out; cancer took his life in August of 2012, ...
read moreRoman Filiu: Musae
by Dan Bilawsky
Drummer Dafnis Prieto created the Dafnison Music label as a means to control his own work and get his forward-thinking recordings into the hands of the public on his own terms. That, however, doesn't mean he isn't willing to use this imprint as a means to promote the work of other deserving artists. Musae marks the first non-Prieto release on Dafnison and turns attention toward the hard-to-define work of saxophonist Roman Filiu. Filiu, who initially found his ...
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